Before computers, numerical analyses, particularly financial ones, were usually prepared on an accountant's columnar pad or spreadsheet, with pencil and calculator in hand. By organizing data into columns and rows, spreadsheets afford the rapid assimilation of information by a reader. The task of preparing a spreadsheet on paper, however, is not quite so fast. Instead, the process tends to be very slow, as each entry must be tediously calculated and entered into the spreadsheet. Since all calculations are the responsibility of the preparer, manually prepared spreadsheets are also prone to errors. Hence, preparation of spreadsheets by hand is slow, tedious, and unreliable.
With the advent of microcomputers, a solution was forthcoming in the form of “electronic spreadsheets.” Better known simply as “spreadsheets,” these software programs provide a computerized replacement for the traditional financial modelling tools: the accountant's columnar pad, pencil, and calculator. In some regards, spreadsheet programs are to those tools what word processors are to typewriters. Spreadsheets offer dramatic improvements in ease of creating, editing, and using financial models.
A typical spreadsheet program configures the memory of a computer to resemble the column/row or grid format of an accountant's columnar pad, thus providing a visible calculator for a user. Because this “pad” exists dynamically in the computer's memory, however, it differs from paper pads in several important ways. Locations in the electronic spreadsheet, for example, must be communicated to the computer in a format which it can understand. A common scheme for accomplishing this is to assign a number to each row in a spreadsheet, and a letter to each column. To reference a location at column A and row 1 (i.e., the upper-lefthand corner), for example, the user types in “Al”. In this manner, the spreadsheet defines an addressable storage location or “cell” at each intersection of a row with a column.
Data entry into an electronic spreadsheet occurs in much the same manner that information would be entered on an accountant's pad. After a screen cursor is positioned at a desired location, the user can enter alphanumeric information. Besides holding text and-numeric information, however, spreadsheet cells can store special instructions or “formulas” specifying calculations to be performed on the numbers stored in spreadsheet cells. In this fashion, cell references can serve as variables in an equation, thereby allowing precise mathematical relationships to be defined between cells. The structure and operation of a spreadsheet program, including advanced functions such as functions and macros, are documented in the technical, trade, and patent literature. For an overview, see e.g., Cobb, S., Using Quattro Pro 2, Borland-OsbomelMcGraw-MII, 1990; and LeBlond, G. and Cobb, D., Using 1-2-3, Que corp., 1985. The disclosures of each of the foregoing are hereby incorporated by reference.
Electronic spreadsheets offer many advantages over their paper counterparts For one, electronic spreadsheets are much larger (i.e., hold more information) than their paper counterparts; electronic spreadsheets having thousands or even millions of cells are not uncommon. Spreadsheet programs also allow users to perform “what-if” scenarios. After a set of computational relationships has been entered into a worksheet, thanks to imbedded formulas and/or built-in functions for instance, the spread of information can be recalculated using different sets of assumptions, with the results of each recalculation appearing almost instantaneously. Performing this operation manually, with paper and pencil, would require recalculating every relationship in the model with each change made. Thus, electronic spreadsheet systems were invented to solve “what-if” problems, that is, changing an input and seeing what happens to an output.
Besides the existence of user manuals, such as user's guides, conventional electronic spreadsheet tools comprise built-in Help facilities for displaying on-line Help information on the user screen. This capability has significantly improved the usability and ergonomy of the electronic spreadsheet tools as they come within a self-standing environment unifying several facets of the tool, such as the operational one, and the educational one. Furthermore some techniques allow the presentation of a context-dependent on-line Help information, so that the user receives the relevant Help information in view of the current context of the tool. For instance, within a dialog box aimed to assist the spreadsheet user for file oriented manipulations, the on-line Help information will only provide Help information corresponding to these file manipulations.
Built-in functions used within formulas to automate the computations in a spreadsheet can be quite complex and hence difficult to tune and to update. It is therefore desirable to rely on the Help information to understand how to use such built-in functions. With conventional electronic spreadsheet tools, such Help information related to built-in functions, usually explains the purpose of the function, specifies which arguments are expected, may give some hints on classical misuse and finally illustrates the function through an example. All this information may be voluminous and sometimes difficult to understand by the “average user” for the most complex functions. This is specially the case when the example used to illustrate the function is really different from the practical case faced by the user. In such a case, the on-line Help information does not really help as it does not match one way or the other the data manipulated by the spreadsheet user. This problem is solved by the present invention which relates to data processing and more particularly to a user interface preferably in a spreadsheet, for providing an on-line content sensitive Help. This content sensitive Help concerns objects, like spreadsheet cells, whose content is entered and manipulated by the user. The content sensitive Help is different to the context sensitive Help (considered as the prior art) in that it is not related to a space-time environment—the space context being defined with means of physical/geographical coordinates on the user's screen, the time context being defined through the logical sequence of the different tasks and routines. The content of an object is entered by the user. As user's entry, the content of an object must satisfy to a particular rule, syntax, grammar or orthography. For instance, a user's entry can be a value, a formula, a code, or a programming language with predefined numeric numbers, parameters, keywords, or statements. It is a further object of the content sensitive Help to provide the user with examples that are not generic but are customized to be consistent with the set of objects already defined. The aim of such a function is to give the possibility to the user to import or to copy/paste these examples in the entry fields with the minimum amendments.